Western Studies on the Sovietization of Eastern Europe

Abstract

AbstractThis paper reviews the studies of Western scholars on the Sovietization of Eastern Europe. Internationally, Sovietization was a significant component of the Soviet Union’s strategy in Eastern Europe after 1945. The Sovietization of Eastern Europe involved regulating international relations, defining the boundaries of these countries, determining the ethnic makeup of these countries through expulsion and population transfer, participating in the drafting of these countries’ constitutions, and deciding the composition of their governments. It is believed that Sovietization aimed to change all aspects of human experience and fundamentally rebuild cultural life, making the Soviet official ideology the guiding ideology of individual life in Eastern European countries. In the view of Western scholars, Sovietization led to two consequences. Firstly, it enabled the Soviet Union to hijack Eastern European countries to form the Eastern Bloc, and through COMECON and the Warsaw Pact, the Soviet Union long controlled Eastern European countries, causing the majority of them to become one side of the Cold War, to deviate from their original socio-economic development trajectory, and to become “The Other” of Europe. Secondly, Sovietization was incompatible with the historical, political, and economic traditions of Eastern European countries in many ways, resulting in Eastern European countries seeking development paths that were in line with their national characteristics and interests in different ways since the mid-1950s, and ultimately leading to dramatic changes in Eastern European politics from 1989 to 1991, completely abandoning the Soviet model and returning to the Western political and economic development models that existed in these countries between the two World Wars.